


scheherazade

by sodiumflare



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Immortal Husbands Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, angsty immortals reckon with the bomb
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:41:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25729123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sodiumflare/pseuds/sodiumflare
Summary: It's a brave new world
Comments: 1
Kudos: 39





	1. Chapter 1

Josef doesn't usually drink because traditions mean something even if the belief behind them is faded, but he and Nikolai get blinding drunk with Delevingne in Cairo in August of 1945. He's had a thousand years of watching the world developing new ways to annihilate each other, but he never dreamed of this. 

"Do you think - do you think that would do it?" he dimly recalls Delevingne asking, slumped in an armchair, face half-buried in a cushion.

Josef tries to imagine it, can't. He has felt his body knit itself together from fragments, bones rejoining in a thousand pieces. Fell off a cliff in the Indian mountains sometime a hundred years ago. Bomb, second Boer War. Gatling gun in the American Civil War. Is there a chemical level at which they could be destroyed, at which they could stay dead? The scientists say that at the deepest level, the stuff they are made out of is the same as this table, that mountain, Delevingne’s favorite knife. The Moon. Nothing is indestructible, but - 

Annika vanishes after she sees the headline, doesn't resurface for months, and when she does, she looks the same as ever, but there's American money in her wallet and desert sand in her shoes. Josef thinks of her in the American west, as ancient and impenetrable as the landscape around her, awash in blinding white light. Later that night, he closes his eyes and breathes in the scent of Nikolai’s hair (his anchor, his rock) and lets the gentle gentle murmurs of Annika and Delevingne in the kitchen wash over him like the tide late into the night.


	2. Chapter 2

The sound of the glass hitting stone barely even makes Nile jump, although her fingers briefly clench on the open refrigerator door. Andy would be proud.

The green glass bottle rolls a lazy oblong on the tile, mercifully unbroken, flashing refracted morning sunlight from the kitchen window. Nile picks it up, inspects it. Her French is still pretty terrible bordering on nonexistent, but even she can recognize a bottle of champagne when she sees it.

A shuffle and a shadow through the kitchen doorway, and Josef grunts as he stretches. "Everything all right here?" he asks, voice still scratchy with sleep.

Nile stares at the open fridge, champagne bottle still loosely cradled in her hand. "This is - this is so much food." She wedges the champagne back where it had apparently been on a bottom shelf, propped between a splintery wood crate of eggs and a jar of green olives the size of a goldfish bowl.

Josef shuffles over. "Ah," he says. "Nicky's hoarding instincts always kick in around August or so." Off her look, he shrugs. "Plague season in Liguria. I take it they're still not talking about trade disruption when they teach medieval history in school?"

Uh. "They barely teach medieval history in school at all," Nile says.

Josef shrugs philosophically. "That's the problem with history," he says, switching the kettle on. "There's so much of it, after all."

**Author's Note:**

> \- Had some fun with the names in this one. Well, mostly Booker ("Delevingne" means "of the vine," ie vineyard) and our figure our boi is less sober than usual, which is saying something, in this period  
> \- That feeling when you're on a Zoom call and fucking around on Twitter and you see a massive explosion over Beirut and need to dump some feelings


End file.
